Autumn Leaves
by nannygirl
Summary: One bright Autumn day, Steven Hyde is raking up the endless amount of leaves on the Forman lawn. Luckily he has some help from a not so quiet Jackie Burkhart. A fluffy, season inspired oneshot!


_**Disclaimer:**_ _I do not own That '70s Show or any of it's characters. I do not own any other movie or TV characters that might be mentioned in this story. I own nothing!_

 _ **Author's Note:**_ _Hi everyone, how are you? Hope you're doing well! I know some of you might have been hoping I'd be updating Meet the Hydes soon, sorry that I'm running a bit late but I am working on the chapter and plan to send out sneak peeks this weekend and posting the real stuff next week. In the meantime though I have this oneshot for you! It's an Autumn themed story and sort of very fluffy but who doesn't love fluff right? I really hope that you all enjoy it. I really thought it was going to be a shorter story but before I knew it I was at over 2,000 words! Just some quick notes before you start reading it. First of all a big thank you to 107derwent for being my cheerleader for this story, encouraging me to finish it so much that I did! Thank you again! Secondly, this story does take place BEFORE Hyde and Jackie get together. In my head I kind of wrote it thinking maybe it was a little before the Veterans Day episode of 'Jackie Bags Hyde' but that was just me. Think as long as you have it set in your mind it's during the time when Jackie starts to like Hyde you should be good! I really hope that you all enjoy this story! Thanks once again so much for stopping by to read it, please if you have the chance be sure to leave a review with your thoughts, I'd love to hear them! Hope you like, thanks again for reading, and as always, please, Enjoy!_

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 **Autumn Leaves**

The single brown leaf glided through the cool Wisconsin air before it landed in the backyard of the Forman House, among the hundreds of other fallen leaves that surrounded Steven Hyde.

Earlier that morning Hyde had volunteered to rake the leaves up as a favor for The Formans. Usually he was happy to do a few extra chores, he saw them as a way to show the family who'd taken him in, his gratitude for all that they'd done for him; however, this time he was beginning to regret making the offer to begin with. He felt as if he'd been out there for three hours but in reality only half an hour had passed. There were several reasons why time was moving at a speed slower than maple syrup, the fact that more and more leaves were gathering on the lawn, the nippy autumn breeze, and the chatterbox brunette who insisted on keeping him company.

"Oh Steven, don't you just love Fall?" Jackie Burkhart was seated on the lawn chair, gazing adoringly at Hyde who continued to stand with the rake in his hands. "It's such a romantic season. There's so much we can do. We can drink apple cider and go on a hayride then we can even go pick some apples."

"Yeah, I'm not doing any of that," Hyde bluntly informed, getting back to his raking.

"Why not?"

Hyde stopped the sweeping motion he was moving the rake in and turned to look at the young girl, "Two reasons. One, I've gotta finish raking up these leaves. Two, I hate that crap."

"Oh don't worry, I can wait till you're done," she assured with a happy smile.

A scowl creased onto Hyde's forehead as he stared back at the still beaming Jackie, it was like she had completely missed his second reason. For a brief moment he thought about repeating himself but soon decided against it, it wasn't worth the fight. He shook his head and shifted his attention back to the scattered leaves that he pulled into a pile with the rake's metal tines.

Silence fell over the two, however, because Jackie Burkhart was half of that pair, the silence did not last very long.

"I know! Let's name some of our favorite things about Fall," her suggestion was filled with excitement and she didn't even wait for a response before she rattled off her answers. "My top three favorite things are the cozy sweaters, the warm drinks, all the cuddling…oh and the fashion! There are way more cute accessories than in the summer and the colors better compliment my skin tone, because I am definitely an Autumn. What about you, Steven? What're your favorite things about Fall?"

Gathering together more crunchy leaves, Hyde muttered his response. "The leaf corpses."

"Oh my God," amazement shown itself on Jackie's face and she placed one hand over her heart as the other reached out in front of her, towards Hyde. "Steven, the dead leaves are my least favorite part about Fall too!"

"Freaky," his tone dripped with sarcasm. Who didn't hate the sight of all these dried up leaves all over the place?

While Jackie may have been able to detect his mockery earlier, she appeared to have missed it this last time and instead just nodded her head before eagerly continuing the conversation of their newly found common disinterest.

"I mean they're old, dirty, and crunchy. If they were from the South, they would be everything that I hate."

Hyde tried to block Jackie and her words out by focusing on the task at hand but she was hard to ignore—his various prior attempts proved this. He'd heard her words and they made him curious, however, not curious enough to take a break from his raking of the fallen leaves.

"If you hate 'em so much, why're you out here now?" he asked Jackie but looked at the leaf covered ground.

Jackie beamed up at him, it was like she had been waiting for him to ask this. "Because I like you."

The dreamy googly eyed look that Jackie looked up at Hyde with was soon seen by the curly haired teen. His response to the look was a noise that sounded much like Frankenstein's monster.

Unaffected by the sound, Jackie had her own question for Hyde. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"If you hate the leaves so much, why are you out here raking them?" she had her arms crossed over her chest and her chin pointed upwards.

He didn't bother to look up from his task, "Told Red I would."

"And you like Red."

"I like not being yelled out," Hyde stated, neither confirming nor denying Jackie's comment. She knew it was a confirmation though.

The grin that had formed on Jackie's face wrinkled itself into a frown, "So Mr. Forman yelled at you to rake the leaves?"

"No, I told him I would before he got the chance to," he explained, already knowing the positive, happy go lucky way she would see it as and how wrong it was. Hyde knew he needed to set it straight before this little cheerleader completely ruined his reputation. "Already knew he was going to, so I said I would before he could. Cut out the loud angry middle man."

By now Jackie's smile had reappeared erasing all traces of her previous confused frown. "Oh Steven, that is so sweet."

"No it's not."

"Yes, it is."

"No it's not."

This time Jackie did not argue back, she knew there wouldn't be any point. She would say it was sweet and Steven would only argue back that it wasn't over and over again. He could argue and deny all he wanted, but the truth was, his gesture was sweet because Steven Hyde was sweet—again no matter how much he argued and denied it.

When Jackie's rebuttal never came, Hyde's satisfaction was only briefly lived. It wasn't like Jackie to not fight back and it was even more unlike her to stay so quiet for so long, it was already going on a full three minutes. Feeling slightly concerned that he might have upset her, Hyde stopped his raking and turned to look behind him, finding a scene that he had definitely not been prepared for.

"What're you doing?" he watched as Jackie scooped up another bunch of fallen leaves into her hands and dropped them into Red's old metal wheelbarrow.

It was odd…very odd to see Jackie Burkhart doing manual labor.

Holding more leaves in her bare hands, she smiled up at him cheerfully announcing "I'm helping!"

The scowl on Hyde's face deepened as the gathering of brown and orange leaves, which had previously been in Jackie's hands, spilled into the pushcart.

"Why?"

"Because that's what friends do, Steven," Jackie began, her voice sincere. "They help each other."

Hyde was about to remind her that they were not friends, but it was a big improvement from her thinking, and telling _everyone_ , that they were in love. Besides he wasn't going to turn away extra help that would help him get this job done a lot quicker.

So instead of saying anything he merely nodded his head and returned to his raking. The lack of argument and the positive head nod, made Jackie very happy as she squealed excitedly, her smile shinning a little brighter, and went back to her task of collecting the fallen leaves in the wheelbarrow.

Minutes passed and the two continued on with their jobs, Hyde raking up the leaves into piles that Jackie would then scoop up between her palms and drop into the wheelbarrow and off the Formans' yard. It was still more than a little eerie for Hyde to see Jackie working outside, working with her hands, just plain working. However, he did appreciate her help (more than he'd ever confess), and especially appreciated the silence she had adopted since starting to help him.

"Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!" a loud scream, that seemed to be getting louder and higher with each 'Ew,' broke through the silence that Hyde had been enjoying. "Something touched my hand!"

His head shifted just slightly so that he could see over his shoulder. Jackie was now standing straight up, away from the flattened pile of leaves, holding her clasped palms close to her heart. A petrified look displayed itself on Jackie's face as she stared down at the leaves at her feet, particularly at the scattered ones she had dropped back onto the lawn.

"Think it was one of those big, brown, fuzzy spiders?" Hyde asked, not able to contain much of his smirk.

"Ew, I don't know. Ugh! I am not doing _that_ again!" the cheerleader's hands were held out in front of her in a halting motion, but she was not planning on stopping. Jackie had another plan. "Here let's switch. Gimme that and you do this."

It was clear that Jackie's idea had not been a suggestion. Before Hyde could form any type of response to her words, Jackie was already standing right next to him, yanking the pole of rake out of his grip. Luckily, Hyde didn't care what task he was doing as long as the job was done before Red came out here and saw it. This way probably worked out better too, Hyde wouldn't worry about any spiders or other bugs touching his hands especially since he was still wearing the borrowed pair of Red's work gloves.

With a simple shoulder shrug, Hyde bent down and gathered up some old leaves in his hands and transferred them over to join the rest of the already collected leaves. He'd only had to repeat the action three or four times before he reached the end of the pile; he then got ready to move onto to the next heap of leaves but soon discovered there was no next heap of leaves.

Instead of finding a raked up mass of dried leaves, Hyde saw Jackie standing right where he'd left her—clutching the handle of the rake in both her hands, staring out at the thousands of leaves scattered before her. She looked nervous, uncertain, even a tad bit scared.

"What's goin' on, Jackie?" Hyde's inquisitive tone was harsher than intended. "Why aren't you raking?"

"I'm going, don't rush me," she replied, mirroring the not so nice tone that Steven had spoken to her in.

"Fine," came his Zen reply, he didn't want to fight—he didn't see a point to it.

Instead Hyde folded his arms over his chest and watched Jackie, waiting for her to start raking, to start moving, to start doing something. When a few more minutes passed and Jackie had yet to move more than a few tiny movements, it suddenly dawned on Hyde what the real problem was.

"You don't know how to rake, do you?"

"Daddy always pays someone to do it for us," Jackie shyly confessed, raising her voice and her finger when she added, "Which is what the Formans should've done."

"Yeah, they did," he informed, "but in this case I'm the Juilo."

"His name is Javier," for some reason she felt the need to correct.

"Whatever. Look rakin's not that hard. It's just like sweepin'." As soon as he said the word, Hyde knew that had been the wrong example to use; and even if he hadn't caught on so soon he would have figured it out when he saw Jackie staring back him then nervously averting her eyes and biting her lower lip. "You've never swept, have you?"

"That's what Daddy pays Marina for."

Hyde could hear the embarrassment in her voice, as well as the tears that were on the verge of coming, and if there was one thing he did not want to deal with right now it was tears.

"Alright don't, don't cry. Rakin' and sweepin' aren't that hard," he did his best to sound less irritated and more assuring. "I'll show you."

The offer Hyde made came as a surprise to Jackie. She had expected him to get frustrated, maybe even pull the rake out of her hands and reclaim the job of raking up the leaves. What he did instead was something she never saw coming.

Jackie felt her heart skip a beat when his hands covered each of her own, so that together they held the stake of the rake. Then her heart nearly stopped altogether when she felt Steven step in right behind her; he was so close that his body was doing a much better job of keeping her warm than any of the fashionable Autumn accessories she was wearing.

Their embrace was not meant to be emotional or physical, it was merely educational but Jackie could have stayed in it that all day.

"Just hold out the rake in front of you, make sure it's at an angle," he was patient as he explained the steps that he helped her perform as well. "Now pull the rake in towards you and keep it touching the ground so you're moving everything in your path."

Hyde's directions were followed to T. Their bodies moved together gathering the scattered leaves into a raked pile, Hyde's leading Jackie's in the motions as Jackie smiled a wistful, starry eyed kind of smile. If it weren't for the rake—and if they were wearing nicer, fancier clothes—it would almost be like they were dancing.

"There, you try it." Hyde's instruction came after they'd performed the actions at least three times.

When Hyde let go of her hands and stepped back away from her, Jackie felt a great bout of disappointment. Now not only was she going to have to do this task on her own but she already missed Steven's hold around her. She didn't let the disappointment linger for too long though, she was determined to make Hyde proud and hopefully get herself back into his warm arms that gave cozy sweaters a run for their money.

"Not bad," he gave a short nod of approval. "Maybe next time I volunteer to clean Red's garage I'll call you up."

Immediately a bright, ecstatic smile sprung onto Jackie's lips. Steven Hyde had just planned out their next date! Well maybe not date but he was planning the next time they would spend time together and that was a big step forward. Jackie wanted to tell him how happy this had made her but knew that the second she did, he'd deny ever doing such a thing.

So instead she kept her happiness to herself, trying her best to contain her grin as she watched Hyde get back to picking up leaves before she continued with her raking.

Only the sounds of dry leaves scrapping and crunching together could be heard as Hyde and Jackie continued to work on their tasks. They were each working at their own pace but soon enough their own pace became in sync with the other's. With the two of them working together, the job was getting done a lot quicker than expected and Hyde was realizing that maybe this hadn't been such a bad idea. After all, not only was the job getting done faster but it was getting done without any of the excessive talking Jackie was known for.

Knowing how hard it must have been for her to keep quite this long, Hyde was about to tell the younger girl how much she appreciated her—well her not talking, that is—when suddenly he felt something sharp poking at the top of his scalp.

With his brows furrowed into a puzzled frown, he lifted his hand to his head and found among his curls something that felt rough and dry and seemed to crack when caught in the grip of his fingers. It was a leaf. But how could a leaf fall onto his head and make it so deep into his fro of curls for him to feel it, he wondered.

Hyde turned around and got his answer.

Jackie was standing behind him with a dried up leaf in her hand as it hovered over Hyde's head, she tried to smile innocently but it was hopeless, she'd been caught red-handed with a red leaf in her hand. It was certainly not a sight Hyde had been expecting to see, Jackie Burkhart holding gross dead leaf at her own will? And now she was sticking them in his hair?

"Jackie, what're you doin?"

"I thought the colors of the leaves might match with your hair color and I wanted to see what it would look like," she explained then titled her head to the side and began looking Hyde over with a critical eye. He stood there looking unhappy, the leaves in his hair doing little to change his mood. "It actually looks really good. I bet you could totally pull of this look, you are definitely an Autumn."

"Oh yeah?" he didn't sound very intrigued though, he sounded like he was up to something. "What about you? Let's see how you look with leaves in your hair."

He was already scooping up handfuls of the dried leaves and Jackie watched him with large, panic-filled eyes.

"Steven, no," Jackie warned, sticking her pointed index finger out in front of her as if it were a weapon that would protect her from him. "No, no. Steven!"

Jackie's squeal continued, at a much louder volume, when Hyde released the leaves from his grasp and they came cascading over her head; more than a couple of them getting stuck in her dark raven locks. She glared murderously at him then reached down to grab more fallen leaves and threw them right at him. Hyde's response to this was to do just the same to her only with the bigger heap of leaves he'd managed to scoop up.

Before either of the two knew it, they were fully engaged in a full blown Leaf Fight.

Scraps of deep red, bright yellow, gaudy orange, and rustic brown fluttered all around them, destroying all the previous progress they'd made with the cleaning of the Forman yard. Neither one of them noticed or seemed to care, they were much too busy running around and throwing leaves at one another. Hyde's main target continued to be Jackie's hair while Jackie, since she was shorter and not table to reach his hair when he was standing, did her best to get some of those itchy leaves down the back of Hyde's shirt.

There were several screams and plenty of laughs, most of them coming from Jackie, but occasionally a heartfelt laugh rang through the air—and it was much too deep to belong to Jackie.

By this time the wheelbarrow they had been using to collect the leaves was nearly empty with its contents scattered around them. Many of the piles that had been raked up were now smashed and destroyed, only one big one remained—and even this one was misshaped and uneven thanks to Jackie and Hyde's current escapade.

When Hyde chased her towards the mound of leaves, Jackie thought fast and playfully shoved Hyde towards the pile but she never expected Hyde to take hold of her and pull her down into the leaves with him!

"Steven!" Her screech was heard over his chuckling.

They laid on their backs in the now flattened pile of leaves, smiling and laughing as they tried to catch their breath. Slowly their laughs lessened and their breathing went back to normal but they remained in their spot on top of the dried up, prickly, fallen leaves.

Hyde had been looking up at the Autumn sky when he suddenly realized he was still holding onto Jackie, onto her hand. It hadn't been on purpose, he had meant to grab her arm but somehow he'd managed to grab her hand and hadn't noticed it until now when he felt her fingers intertwine with his. He swung his head to the left, finding Jackie staring back at him with a smile on her face.

Normally seeing Jackie smiling back at him like a lovesick puppy would have more than annoyed Hyde, but this time was different. She didn't have that lovesick puppy look to her, she looked happy, sincere, and even kind of beautiful.

Because they were so close, mere inches from each other, Jackie could see Hyde's eyes through his shades and found that they were locked on hers.

"What in hell?"

Immediately Hyde and Jackie sprang up into sitting positions, unlacing their fingers from the other, neither one of them caring that they had more than a couple of leaves tangled in their hair. Having leaves stuck in their hair was the last thing on their minds now that they had an angry looking Red Forman marching their way.

"Steven, what the hell is going on out here?" Red's booming voice demanded to know. "It looks worse now than it did when you started."

Hyde didn't have to look around to know that the older man was right. "Yeah, I know, Red. Sorry. I'll still have it done by three thirty like you asked."

"I'm sorry too, Mr. Forman," Jackie jumped into the conversation.

Red's scowl deepened when he saw the young girl for the first time since stepping outside. "You?"

"Jackie," she reminded him incase he'd forgotten. Jackie wasn't a forgettable person, she knew this. but she also knew that sometimes old people could forget things.

"What're you doing here?" Red gruffly asked, completely dismissing the information she'd given him.

A smile beamed itself on Jackie's pretty face, "I'm helping Steven."

"Right, _helping_ ," Red's tone did not sound very convinced as he eyed the twosome.

Red knew what 'helping' meant. Hell, he could recall times when Kitty had been out there 'helping' him.

During their first winter at this house, Kitty had come out to help him shovel the snow off the driveway. They hadn't cleared up much of the driveway, they'd probably made more of a mess than anything else when they started a snowball fight between the two of them. The snowball fight had been nothing but playful and though Red couldn't recall exactly how it had started, he remembered it resulting in them freezing their asses off and going inside the house to warm each other up.

Clearing his throat, Red pulled himself out of the old memory. "Tell you what Steven, I'll give you another hour to get the job done. You've got until four thirty."

The lenient gesture from Red came as surprise to Hyde, he was almost too flabbergasted to speak but finally managed. "Uh…thanks, Red."

"Don't mention it," came the older man's reply, then he face became stern once more. "Either one of you. Got it?"

After seeing both teenagers nod their heads in agreement, Red gave his own short nod before going back into his house to find his wife and share the memory he'd rediscovered; muttering about dumbasses as he left.

Once Red was gone, Hyde pushed himself out of the leaves and onto his feet before helping Jackie onto hers.

"Look Jackie, I really gotta get this done 'fore Red gets back," he told her as he bent down and picked up the abandoned rake. "Why don't you go down to the basement? Donna and Forman are probably in there."

"But I'm helping you," Jackie reminded and Hyde just about scoffed when she seemingly read his mind and continued. "I helped you make this mess, it's only fair that I help you pick it up. Besides with two of us picking up, I bet we can finish way before the time Mr. Forman gave you."

Hyde merely nodded his head, he'd never say it aloud but he was glad that Jackie was so set on staying. "Cool. Maybe we'll have time for that apple cider after all."

"Oh my God, Steven, really?"

"I draw the line at hayrides and apple picking," was the reply he gave her.

"Deal," Jackie was swift to agree but soon realized she was using too much excitement and not enough Zen. She didn't want to scare Steven off so she relaxed her facial features. "I mean, whatever."

Jackie's Zen earned her an approving nod from Hyde before they went back to the tasks of raking up and collecting all the fallen autumn leaves.

 **The End**

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 _ **Author's Note:**_ _So what did you think? Love it? Hate it? Have mixed feelings about it? Let me know what you thought in a review!_

 _Hope you all enjoyed the story and it sort of put you all in the Fall mood. Actually posting it on a day that we are FINALLY getting some Fall-like weather here I'm excited! Hope you all are enjoying the season!_

 _Until next time, thanks for reading, hope you liked, please review and lemme know what you think, take care, and have a nice day!_


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